Social Networking

Oh no, I knew it would come up. I am more familiar with facebook/my space than I have been with any other technology that we have looked at so far, but I have to admit I am not a believer. I can see the potential, certainly, but there seem to be some important concerns. My main, initial concern was the amount of time people waste on their facebook pages (having just come from university, this was very evident, as a common form of procrastination was decorating one's profile, finding new friends or playing scrabble etc with people on facebook.) But it also seems concerning that people collect friends like stamps, with little intention of really having a relationship with them - the aim is just to find as many friends so that people think you are popular. And don't get me started on the whole virtual worlds thing, to me, that is just plain creepy... Or maybe I am just cynical.

Online applications

Wow, there are so many things avaliable for free out there. The bargin-hunter in me is excited!! I was also pleased to see the guy from u-tube who explains stuff with his little paper cut-outs was back. I find it much easier to understand things when they are explained through this medium, rather then just reading the explanations - which I guess underscores the usefulness of this course, by introducing new forms of communcition which may be more effective than other, more traditional methods.

I can really see the usefullness of this online collaboration thing - I know what it is like to have hundreds of versions of the same document floating around on emails, and can see great potential for this to be effective and time-saving behind the scenes at the library. Organising newsletters, co-ordinating press-releases and other events, etc would be much easier if everyone could work on the same thing. THis was what appealed to me about wikis as well - the fact that things don't need to be updated individually.

More mashing...

I had fun looking at the different projects that Huge Big labs allowed me to create using my photos - some sounded and looked really interesting, and I will keep them in mind for use with my personal photos. (I just hoped that these kind of projects were the ones we were meant to make for this week, I couldn't find the word "mash-up" any where on the flickr page.)

This allows for some really interesting possibilities for library advertising, where we can use photos of the library etc in really unusual and professional lookng ways. Making posters using these techniques will certainly be more eye catching than the usual clip-art + publisher versions!

I am not sure I really understand the whole range of mash-ups though. I get that they are a hybrid of two web-based ideas which allow new and different uses, but I'm not sure I would recognise one if it wandered across my path. (perhaps I needed that guy who introduced the earlier weeks with his little videos to explain it to me.)

Mash-Ups

Wow, the images of stars that were avaliable through the star viewer were incredible!!

Answer boards

I have been putting into practice that which I have learned from this course, and actually posted a library related question on the yahoo answerboard. While I haven't actually received any replies yet, I was impressed that the things I have learned could so easily and quickly be applied to real work!

Librarything

Well, I'm afraid that all my attempts to embed a search widget in my blog for librarything were not no avail. Alas!! Well, I tried.

buttterflies